The Atlantic Looks at How Google Builds Maps

The office where Google has been building the best representation of the world is not a remarkable place. It has all the free food, ping pong, and Google Maps-inspired Christoph Niemann cartoons that you’d expect, but it’s still a low-slung office building just off the 101 in Mountain View in the burbs.

I figured they had offices, but I’ve clearly underestimated the ping pong factor. Time to get Paul to buy some ping pong tables for the offices.

The big takeaway (if you don’t like reading liberal leaning publications) is that humans are still critical to getting these maps accurate, even with the computing power of Google. I can’t imagine a more depressing job than shifting these roads around, but someone has to do it and I’m glad they do.